Drawing with Light (16 page)

– It means I can find out who she is.

– DON'T.

– Why not? Aren't you curious too?

– NO. She's nothing to do with us.

– I want to find her.

My words hang there. I wait ages for Kat to answer. Finally she starts typing again.

– I'm getting on fine with my life without her. I don't need her messing it up again. Nor do you.

Then she's off-line. I can't even answer back.

I read back the typed conversation. My own words surprise me.
I want to find her
. I typed that sentence without a thought, and the real truth came out. I want to find her. I want to see her, what she's like. I want to know everything about her.

I search through Kat's box of books on the shelf, and fish out the faded book of fairy tales. I open the front cover, trace my finger around the name, like Kat and I used to do.
Francesca
.

Who on earth is she?

What kind of mother leaves two small children, and doesn't even try to tell them why?

I try one more time, searching back through all my memories, to find one of her. Just the tiniest fragment. The feel of her arm, or the smell of her perfume, or the sound of her voice.

Nothing.

All I have are the memories of
afterwards,
of Kat and me in the garden, eating raspberries and redcurrants, Kat reading to me and telling me stories.

I try to imagine it. I close my eyes and concentrate hard.

That last day, before she went. Because there would have been a day like that, a day before leaving, when she did ordinary things with me and Kat, like any ordinary mum. Making breakfast. Washing-up. Getting us dressed. Walking to the shops, me in a buggy and Kat holding the handle. Did she take us to the park? Push us on the swings? Or was it a truly terrible day, both of us yelling and squabbling, endless rain, no car, Dad at work till late, like he always was, night after night? Francesca bored bored bored, frustrated and lonely, the artist who can't paint, can't take photos, desperate and at the end of her tether.

How bad would it have to be, to make you leave everything?

I lie awake for ages, thinking about what I've found out today.

It's like someone's lifted off the top of my head and let in all this air. I'm dizzy with it.

6

‘Want to come to Moat House at the weekend? See the latest developments?' Dad says over supper on Thursday. ‘They've worked fast these last couple of weeks.'

Cassy looks at him. ‘How about if we go and get Mattie first, and bring her with us? Instead of a walk, she can just have a run around.'

‘Good idea,' Dad says. ‘What do you think, Em?'

‘It depends,' I say. ‘Are we going to adopt her or not? And if not, what's the point? It'll just make me sad.'

‘You know we can't have her yet,' Cassy says. ‘It doesn't make any sense. But when we move into Moat House, things will be different. Rob and I've talked about it. There is lots of room, what with the garden, and the field. You were right about that. It's a good place for a dog.'

‘Is that a yes, then?'

‘It's a
probably
,' Cassy says. ‘That's as much as I can promise at the moment.'

My eyes sting with sudden tears. Perhaps things will work out for Mattie, at least.

* * *

Mattie sits on the seat in the back of the car with me, her head resting in my lap. She's trembling, as if she's afraid. Or cold. I stroke her silky ears, and run my hand over her spine. You can feel all the bones, and even though I know she's that kind of dog, I can't help thinking she's way too skinny. But she perks up when we get out of the car, and she dashes across the garden like a coiled spring, newly released, charging through the big puddles and running round in ever-increasing circles. We walk up the steps to the front door, and when I call her, Mattie comes racing back.

‘She remembers you all right,' Cassy says. ‘It's good to see that.'

The beautiful oak front door has been restored and has a proper lock on it. Inside, the house smells of new wood instead of damp and decay. The floorboards have been laid upstairs; electric cables are being installed. In the centre of the big front room, the new staircase winds round in a spiral to the first floor. The French windows are in place, so the house is flooded with light. Cassy and Dad go into the kitchen together. Cassy's making little exclaiming sounds. ‘Oh . . . oh, Rob . . . It's just lovely!' I watch Dad; he stands behind Cassy, puts his arms around her, his hands over her belly. He nuzzles his face into her hair. They don't need me. They've forgotten I'm here, even.

Mattie whines to go back outside and I go with her. I close the door softly behind me and follow her down to the river. It's still high, up almost to the top of the banks, and beyond it, the field gleams silver, another lake. The geese I saw with Seb have all gone. Mattie sniffs along the bank, tail low and quivering, following some scent trail. She scuffs through the dead leaves beneath the willows, and then slips under the fence into the copse of trees.

I can't get it out of my head: that image of Dad and Cassy and the new baby. The new family who will live in this perfect house, when it's finished, all clean and made new. The house is coming awake again, everything starting over, afresh. But it all looks so different to me, now. I can't feel excited about any of it.

When Seb and I came here that first time and we climbed the scaffolding to my attic room, and we pushed the skylight wide open to let in the night, and when we first kissed . . . it was as if everything was thrilling. Everything was about to happen. I was excited about the house, about Seb, about me . . .

And now it's not like that. It's like everything's been spoiled.

I turn when I hear footsteps.

‘There you are!' Dad comes over, a clipboard in his hand. ‘Want to see the early plans for out here?'

He's oblivious to what I'm feeling. He just ploughs on, regardless. ‘Wondered about having a dovecote, a traditional circular stone tower, just here.' He points to the place on the plan with his pencil. ‘Like the one at Minster Lovell. Remember? You loved it, when you were little.'

I do remember. The sound of the doves echoed round the tower when I ducked through the little door and crouched inside. Small white feathers drifted down from the rafters, and it was warm in the summer sun. And Kat was calling for me, looking for me all over the gardens, while I stayed curled up, hidden and happy in my secret place . . .

Dad's still talking. ‘. . . formal kitchen gardens, up near the house, with box hedges, but we'll let it all run a bit wild down to the river . . . daffodils and fritillaries in the long grass. Cowslips and foxgloves . . .'

I don't say a word.

Dad finally stops. ‘What's the matter with you?' he asks. His voice is strained, edged with irritation.

I shrug. He hates that.

‘Emily!'

‘What?'

‘Can't you show a bit more interest? A bit of enthusiasm? Aren't you excited about all this? The house? You were, before.'

Before.

Exactly.

Before the baby. Before I started finding things out about Francesca. Before I argued with Seb. Before Kat got close to Dan and couldn't be bothered with me any more.

‘It doesn't feel like my house any more,' I mumble.

‘It's a mess, I know, with the builders' stuff all over the place, but it's getting better all the time. You wait and see. It's going to be fabulous.'

‘It's not that,' I say.

‘What, then?'

‘It's you. Cassy and you and the baby. That's who the house belongs to really. That's what it's been about all along. Only I didn't see that before.'

‘How can you say that? You mustn't think that!'

‘But I do.'

‘Hey, Em. Come here.' He tries to put his arm round me.

I pull away. I stare at the brown water, the branches being swirled downstream in the fast flow of the river.

‘Emily?' Dad isn't going to let it go. ‘Listen to me. The baby doesn't change the way I feel about you and Kat.'

‘NO? You listen to ME, for once!' I shout, suddenly furious. All that pent-up emotion I've been holding on to, deep inside, comes boiling up. ‘You never tell me the truth about anything. You never have. You've never once thought about what it's like for me. Living with you and Cassy. Always having to move house because of YOUR stupid plans and your stupid houses. Living in a caravan, for God's sake, in the middle of winter, miles from everyone, in the middle of a muddy field.'

Dad's staring at me, but I can't stop. I'm on a roll.

‘And that's not the worst thing. Not by a million miles. All these years and years and you've never had the guts to tell me the truth about my mother. Never talked about her or told me why she went or where she is now. You never even told me her real name.'

Dad steps back. It makes me want to hit him.

‘You could have told me that, don't you think? One little thing about her NAME. Francesca DAVIDSON! Hah!' I spit the words out, hurl them like stones. ‘Can you imagine what it's like, to suddenly find that out, when you are sixteen? No. Because you're too much of a coward. Because you never think about anyone except yourself.'

‘That's not true –' Dad starts to defend himself, but his phone rings at the same moment.

I can't believe what he does next. He actually pulls his phone out of his pocket and checks to see who it is! And then he answers it. The final insult.

‘Cassy? What's up?' He turns away from me to talk to her.

That's how it's always going to be. Clear as anything, I see how it will be from now on. Cassy first. Cassy-and-baby first.

I start running.

Dad calls after me. ‘Emily? Wait a moment. We will talk about it . . . just let me sort this out and then –'

‘Piss off, Dad.'

I skid in the mud, fumble my way under the willow trees, climb through the barbed-wire fence into the copse where Mattie went after the rabbits. My jacket gets snagged on the wire and I have to unhook it, before I can start running again, pushing through the wet branches and brambles and undergrowth, my face wet and my eyes smarting.

A huge bird rears up from a dead branch and flaps away noisily over the treetops. I keep running and crying and stumbling, my jeans sopping and my boots muddy and disgusting, until I'm out of breath and shaking, my heart thumping so loud it makes my ears ring.

I finally stop, and listen. Silence closes in. No traffic sounds, or birds even. Just a faint dripping sound of rain on leaves. No sound of Dad crashing after me through the undergrowth. No chance, then, of carrying on shouting and hurting him and getting it all out of me, letting go of all those horrible thoughts and feelings, saying all the cooped-up words at last.

Instead, he's obviously gone back to talk to Cassy about the house. Even the house is more important than me.

I lean back against the wet bark of an oak tree. My feet slip in the dead leaves at the base of the trunk and I let myself slide, down to earth, till I'm actually sitting on the wet ground, my back against the tree. I hug my knees.

I'm just another wet thing in the wet wood, almost the same colour, now, with all the mud and the rain and the bits of twig and dead stuff caught on my jacket and in my hair.

The rain turns to a fine drizzle. It drips through the tree on to my head and shoulders. I don't move. The rain finally stops, although every time the wind moves the branches a fine spray spatters down. Still I crouch there.

Nearby, a bird starts to sing. I can actually see its throat quivering as it opens its beak. Other birds join in. It's like the wood comes alive again. Some creature rustles through the dead leaves under the bramble thicket. A woodpecker hammers the trunk of a tree some way off. Now the rain has stopped I can hear the rush of the river as it tumbles over the weir further down the valley.

Another time. A different wood. Kat and me, playing under an oak tree while Dad is – where? I can't remember. Just the waiting for him to come back, and a sort of worry in my belly: he's been too long. Kat peels the bark off a stick. I watch a line of ants march single file across the corner of the blanket, holding their tiny burden of crumbs above their heads. A column of flies rise and fall in flight together. A background hum of insect life. The smell of peaty earth: leaf mould. I take a stick and drill it down into the sweet rich earth, down through the layers of rotting leaves, one autumn over another, down to the soil dark as coffee grounds.

That's what memory is like: layers, one overlapping another, and compacting down the way old leaves slowly crumble and turn to a rich peaty soil, nourishing the new things that will grow. It's why it's important, remembering things. It's why it matters, when the memories aren't there, and no one fill in the gaps for you.

A twig snaps. I'm suddenly alert, watchful. A swishing sound: feet moving through wet grass. I stay as still as I can, hunched against my tree, arms round my knees, blending into the life of the woods.

A fox? A person?

I let my breath out slowly.

I see Dad before he sees me. He looks tired, and old, his face somehow not yet ready, not expecting to be seen.

‘Dad?'

He stops; he looks baffled for the second before he sees me, camouflaged against the tree. He comes over. ‘Found a dry spot?' he says.

‘Not really. It's OK.'

He hunkers down beside me. We don't speak.

I'm not angry, now I see Dad. I'm just glad he's here. That he did come to find me, after all.

‘Did we live near some woods a bit like these, once?' I say. ‘Did Kat and I play there?'

‘A long, long time ago. Fancy you remembering that. You were very little,' Dad says.

‘I'm not sure what I remember,' I say, ‘and what I've been told. Kat used to tell me things.'